The calendar and clock acted as legislative guillotine in the dark and shuttered Oregon Capitol in the first minute of April 5.

As it passed midnight, the sweep of the second hand on the clockface lopped off about two-thirds of the nearly 3,000 measures introduced by the Oregon Legislature in 2023.

The “First Chamber Deadline” requiring most bills to get a committee vote or die. 

The dead bill count was still being tallied two weeks later, but the amount of legislation sent to the statutory slaughterhouse was huge. 

At risk was legislation still stuck in a policy committee of the “first chamber” where it was introduced (House bills in the House, Senate bills in the Senate).

Legislators scrambled to get committee chairs to save their bill by sending it to the floor for a vote or a “safe harbor” – the panels exempt from the clock. Legislation moved to one of the 11 joint Senate-House committees or to either chamber’s rules and revenue committees lived on. 

Within a minute into April 5, thousands of bills were gone. A trickle might return this session using legislative sleights-of-hand, but the message to sponsors of the overwhelming majority was: “wait ’til next year.”

The drive to survive mounted by bills authors ran into the epic paper traffic jam created by a Republican strategy to slow and stall the conveyor-belt of new laws authored by Democrats.

The minority Republicans used an archaic constitutional rule to require each bill be read in full prior to a vote on final passage. A tin-toned artificial reading machine with a vocal pace beyond what was humanly possible droned on for hours.

The majority Democrats countered by using their leadership positions to schedule more and longer committee meetings and floor sessions.

Bloviating is a natural state in political bodies around the world.

“Everything has been said, but not everyone has said it,” the late U.S. Rep. Mo Udall, D-Arizona, once quipped about a long evening of comment on Capitol Hill.

Republicans could extended floor sessions (and shorten the number of bills that could be heard) by copious use of the official time set aside for general praise and criticism. Know officially as courtesies and remonstrations, they are another opportunity to run out the clock on the daily voting.

Each side blamed the other for the forced tedium, but the end result for the many freshmen new to Salem was a bipartisan baptism in boredom.

Rep. Emerson Levy, D-Bend, likened the slo-mo tempo to “molasses in December.”

After a long and ultimately fruitless series of attempts to pull GOP bills out of committee to force a floor vote, lawmakers drained of stamina still found energy to take to the floor to castigate opponents.

“We simply let politics and shenanigans get in the way,” said Rep. Lucetta Elmer, R-McMinnville. “It’s ludicrous. It’s asinine and I am weary.”

Partisanship and professions key winners and losers

Returning to work on April 5, lawmakers found less than 1,000 bills remaining – about a third of what had officially been on their agenda the day before. Exactly what was left and what was gone wasn’t always apparent.

Bills introduced with optimistic fanfare in January disappeared in silent anonymity in April, their authors loathe to call attention to their efforts that stalled or sank.

The copious bills authored by Republicans without Democratic co-sponsors were often ignored by Democratic committee chairs who decide which bills received hearings and are brought up for a vote.

Sen. Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles, introduced the latest incarnation of “Ezra’s Law” to increase minimum sentences for those convicted of severely beating children. It didn’t receive a hearing and lacked Democratic co-sponsors that have helped similar bills become law.

Having a Democratic sponsor didn’t guarantee a move to the front of the legislative queue. Liberal issues such as a $ 1,000-per-month guaranteed minimum income authored by Sen. WInsvey Campos, D-Aloha, died at the deadline.

So did a conservative bill by Sen. Kim Thatcher, R-Salem, that allowed out-of-state concealed carry permits to be recognized in Oregon.

Legislation to increase minimum prison time for violent sex offenders and how they are assessed for possible parole was introduced by Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp, R-Bend, The package of Republican-sponsored bills didn’t advance beyond their initial introduction. Knopp’s attempt on April 10 to have the bills pulled from the Senate Judiciary Committee and brought to the floor for a vote was defeated. 

After three 9-year-old children and three adults were killed in a mass shooting at a school in Nashville, House Republicans sought to resurrect a stalled “School Safety Package” calling for campus guards, metal detectors at some schools, and renovations to limit the number of entry and exit points of classrooms and other buildings.

“Yesterday’s tragedy is a parent’s worst nightmare,” House Minority Leader Vikki Breese-Iverson, R-Prineville said.

Democratic leaders narrowly but successfully fended off the bills with only Republican sponsors, saying they were an attempt to divert attention from upcoming gun control bills.

But legislation without a bright partisan dividing line could nonetheless end up on the spike as well.

A bill to restore recreational liability waivers pitted Oregon’s lucrative athletic activities industry against trial lawyers who wanted to retain the ability of clients to sue operators and owners.

The bill had a hearing where the majority of testimony came from speakers who wanted to limit lawsuits against ski resorts, gyms, dance studios, swimming teams, whitewater rafting guides and others. 

But the bills was never scheduled for the needed “work session” by Senate Judiciary Committee chair Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene.

Desperate measures and new deadlines

As the April 4 deadline approached, key policy committees such as House Judiciary and Senate Education were clogged with a backlog of bills whose sponsors hoped to get them into a safe harbor committee.

“Everyone is scrambling to keep their bills alive,” said Rep. David Gomberg, D-Central Coast wrote in an email to constituents. “This has made for a hectic week for both legislators and staff.”

In counterpoint to the thousand or so bills that died, just 24 have made it to the desk of Gov. Tina Kotek to be signed into law. They include big packages on homeless and housing programs and aid for the state’s semiconductor industry.

The Legislature will focus more time on the state budget in the second half of the session. It’s a fraught process since, unlike Congress, the Legislature has to craft a balanced budget – money spent has to be balanced by money coming in.

But there is also still enough pending legislation to put partisan tempers on boil: abortion access, gun control, rent control, and transgender healthcare rights.

The next key deadline is May 19, when action is required on bills in their second chamber.

After that, it’s the money machinations in the final budget. Legislators, unlike their counterparts in Congress, do not have the option of running a deficit. The Oregon constitution requires a balanced budget.

Leaders of the Democratic majority have circled June 15 as a “target” day to end the session. With the backlog of bills, it’s an optimistic timetable. The Oregon Constitution says the Legislature can meet until June 25 – at which point it is required to adjourn. 

Rep. Janelle Bynum, D-Clackamas, underlined how clashing and compromising are part of the work of being lawmakers.

“This is the place where we do the messy work,” Bynum said April 6 on the House floor. “It’s not a popularity contest. It’s a place where we make tough decisions. It’s a place where we plan for Oregon’s future.”